PHILLIES NEWS

As you traverse through the long winding road that is the MLB regular season, you will come across some bumps in the road, that you know should have flattened but you didn't. Tonight's(Friday) game was one of those bumps that should have been flattened. It's not often that any team, even the Phillies, builds an early lead with their staff ace on the mound and is unable to make it stand up, but that is exactly what happened to Phillies. They built an early 3-0 lead over the Giants on a sacrifice fly by Bobby Abreu in the 1st inning, and a 2 run homer by Ryan Howard in the 4th inning, yes it's official the home run derby is not still bothering him. This 3-0 lead however, would not last long as Jon Lieber just did not have his best stuff today when needed it. In the very same 4th inning in which Howard had homered, the Giants Ray Durham hit a two homer of his own, following a walk and a stolen base by of all people, Barry Bonds. 2 innings later in the bottom of the 6th things got worse for the Phillies, as with one out and 2 on Chase Utley booted a sure double play ball. By the time the smoke had finally cleared on the inning the Giants had scored 2 more runs, and Utley had gone from All-Star to goat in less than a week. At this point the Giants led 5-3 and as they say in some news circles that's the way the cookie crumbled. The Phillies never recovered from Utley's gaff, and the bullpens of both teams shut things down the rest of the way. Not quite what I had in mind yesterday when I was hoping that the Phillies would get on off the on right foot in this the second half of their season. In fact if you ask me I'd say they got off the wrong foot. With this loss the Phillies are now 8 games under .500 at 40-48 and seem to be slipping closer and closer towards the dark abyss of rebuilding, and selling off all of their veterans. For the sake of all those like me, who have suffered with this team for the last 12 years, let's hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does just remember I told you so. Well happy trails everyone.